[mettacitta]

Active noise cancelling is a nice option but a tad overated IMHO.
Had on it the NWZ-A847, it worked well but then I realised with decent enough headphones it wasn't that much of an issue and having it on often is a definite battery killer. I only ever used it on airplanes maybe

 

[castleofargh]

  or may its just the tweaking in the software side of the player rather than any hardware addition to Japanese version.

you might not be far off on that one, the inside of the jack plug has 4 contacts on mine(EU version), the very same way it is disposed on my E585(noise cancelling).
can't say if they bothered to actually connect the 4th contact to something, but they didn't bother to change the plug at least.

 

[sardar17]

Active nc works properly only with active nc earphones so it does have a hardware side to it.

No idea if there is any physical hardware specifically for it in walkman.

Has anybody used simple earphones with nc function selected in walkman?

 

[liderbit]

Active nc works properly only with active nc earphones so it does have a hardware side to it.

No idea if there is any physical hardware specifically for it in walkman.

Has anybody used simple earphones with nc function selected in walkman?

It does NOT work with simple earphones. They should be noise cancelling ones.
 
And you are right, there is hardware support.

 

[sardar17]

  It does NOT work with simple earphones. They should be noise cancelling ones.
 
And you are right, there is hardware support.

yes,i suspected that

 

[heatofamatch]

Active nc works properly only with active nc earphones so it does have a hardware side to it.

No idea if there is any physical hardware specifically for it in walkman.

Has anybody used simple earphones with nc function selected in walkman?

 
Active NC requires computation, however simple it may be, and Sony makes (or at least made in the past) a proprietary chip for that purpose. These days they may have incorporated it into the general "system LSI" and literally add NC into the final digital sound stream alongside whatever sound effect you apply, before the whole thing then goes to the S-master amp where it finally converts into analog. Either way it's not something that'll work without dedicated hardware somewhere in the chain.
 
Those people who say "it does not matter because the earphones are not high quality, blah blah," let me say this again: you are why we can't have nice things!

because you are the reason Sony removes these features outside Japan. It actually is a minor feat to get small active NC IEMs to the level of quality of these bundled IEMs, i.e. surprisingly okay sound in spite of active NC being there to muck things up.

 

[goody]

   
Active NC requires computation, however simple it may be, and Sony makes (or at least made in the past) a proprietary chip for that purpose. These days they may have incorporated it into the general "system LSI" and literally add NC into the final digital sound stream alongside whatever sound effect you apply, before the whole thing then goes to the S-master amp where it finally converts into analog. Either way it's not something that'll work without dedicated hardware somewhere in the chain.
 
Those people who say "it does not matter because the earphones are not high quality, blah blah," let me say this again: you are why we can't have nice things!

because you are the reason Sony removes these features outside Japan. It actually is a minor feat to get small active NC IEMs to the level of quality of these bundled IEMs, i.e. surprisingly okay sound in spite of active NC being there to muck things up.

For me i love NC it works and is a must have feature for me hence i am getting the japanese release, well worth it for the bundled IEM 

 

[castleofargh]

 finally ran out of battery. so after first charge, it turned off a little after 38h using mostly no FX and mp3. with maybe 5hours of hires and/or DSPs over 3 days of fooling around.
so it means that even using hires and some DSP all the time, you're pretty much guaranteed to get passed 20hours.
 
omedetou sony!

 

[goody]

   finally ran out of battery. so after first charge, it turned off a little after 38h using mostly no FX and mp3. with maybe 5hours of hires and/or DSPs over 3 days of fooling around.
so it means that even using hires and some DSP all the time, you're pretty much guaranteed to get passed 20hours.
 
omedetou sony!

holy smokey!! thats a winner for me

 

[rgr555]

whats this talk about bundled iem in the japanese version? blue ones will come with iems with nc?

 

[goody]

  whats this talk about bundled iem in the japanese version? blue ones will come with iems with nc?

yes as far as i know..if it has NC then it should include NC IEMS this is pure speculation to be honest

 

[turokrocks]

Here he talks about  it compared to the X5 :
 
http://www.3dnews.ru/903427
 
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dnews.ru%2F903427&edit-text=

 

[nekromantik]

Here he talks about  it compared to the X5 :
 
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&ie=UTF-8&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dnews.ru%2F903427

link don't work

 

[oneway23]

  Here he talks about  it compared to the X5 :
 
http://www.3dnews.ru/903427
 
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.3dnews.ru%2F903427&edit-text=

 
This is just a translation of the CNET review that was posted a couple of days ago, so if you've seen that, you're good.  If not, read this.

 

[nekromantik]

They prefer the x5 over this but x5 is a lot more.
Should have done a x3 comparison.